COMING MAY 6, 2025!
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Little Great Island
On Little Great Island, climate change is disrupting both life and love.
After offending the powerful pastor of the cult where she’s lived for a decade, Mari McGavin must flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up—a place she swore she’d never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island’s summer residents, now back himself to sell his family’s summer home. Mari and Harry’s lives intertwine once again, setting off a chain of events as unexpected and life altering as the shifts in climate affecting the whole ecosystem of the island…from generations of fishing families to the lobsters and the butterflies.
Little Great Island illustrates in microcosm the greatest changes of our time and the unyielding power of love.
PRAISE
“An extraordinary achievement and a pure pleasure to read.”
—Ha Jin, National Book Award winner of War Trash
“I loved, loved, loved this book. About good people and bad decisions, small towns and big corporations, this is also a novel about how deep love – for others and for our planet – can evolve. And, if we are lucky, heal.”
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Days of Wonder
“If you love the novels of Elizabeth Strout and Anne Rivers Siddons…you will love Little Great Island. This is one of those novels you will carry inside you forever.
—Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us and The Lost Family
“Little Great Island tenderly unpacks how people process the unexpected things that happen to them, allowing the characters’ transformations to unfold organically. It is also a complex love story—not necessarily romantic but moving nonetheless…An uplifting and grown-up novel in which two lost souls find love and purpose.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This story hums with life and purpose.”
—Whitney Scharer, author of the internationally best-selling and award-winning novel, The Age of Light
“A powerful and satisfying examination of one woman’s fight to save herself, her son, and the community she calls home.”
—Mira T. Lee, author of Everything Here is Beautiful, an Amazon Top 20 Best Literature/Fiction Books of 2018
“Put Anthony Doerr’s The Shell Collector, John Banville’s The Sea, and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridgeinto a mixer and out comes Kate Woodworth’s deeply beautiful Little Great Island.”
—Sophie Powell, author of The Mushroom Man
“Deftly navigating themes of love and loyalty, forgiveness and redemption, Woodworth welcomes us to Little Great Island with open arms. What resonates most about this novel, other than Woodworth’s clear and vivid prose, is her ability to reveal one place from many perspectives—year-round locals and summer people alike—giving readers a vibrant, nuanced understanding of a community at a critical juncture of its evolution.”
— Shannon Bowring, author of The Road to Dalton and Where the Forest Meets the River
“A beautiful book about loss and forgiveness and second chances. About going home again and confronting the ghosts that haunt us.”
—Shari Goldhagen, author of Family Life and Other Accidents; In Some Other World, Maybe; and 100 Days of Cake
“A meditation on loss and a vibrant call to action, Little Great Island is, like the waters around Maine’s coast, both beautiful and nourishing.”
—Julie Gerstenblatt, author of Daughters of Nantucket
“A timely tale, yet timeless in its exploration of the complexities that drive the choices we make toward self-discovery and, ultimately, redemption.”
—Femi Kayode, award-winning author of Lightseekers and Gaslight
“The power of community and connection in the face of climate change is explored masterfully in this beautiful novel. The soul of an island is at stake, but Kate Woodworth shows with gorgeous prose and a stunning narrative refrain how even though ‘we can’t change the past, we can change the way we understand it.’ Little Great Island captures the fragile ecosystems of both our regions and our relationships and how resourcefulness can help heal both.”
—Marjan Kamali, bestselling author of The Stationery Shop and The Lion Women of Tehran